After Hours
A Grumpy/Sunshine M/M Romance
The Closing Time Series Book 1 • by Ames Willow
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Very Hot
Tropes: Grumpy/Sunshine, Age Gap, Authority Figure, Touch-Starved, Forced Proximity
He watches him through forty-two cameras. He knows he’s watching. And when he waves at Camera 23, everything changes.
Jason Chen has rules. Rule #1: Don’t get involved. As the head of security for the dying Ridgewood Galleria, Jason spends his nights in the basement hub, watching the world through forty-two camera feeds. It’s quiet. It’s safe. It’s lonely. But it keeps the memories of Fallujah at bay, and it keeps his heart locked up tight.
Marco Reyes has a theory. Rule #1: Everyone is playing a game. Marco is twenty-one, works the prize counter at the Galaxy Arcade, and is bored out of his mind. He’s also the only bright spot on Jason’s monitors. When Marco realizes the stoic security chief is watching him on Camera 23, he doesn’t hide. He waves.
It starts as a game. A wave. A smile. A challenge in a dark corridor. But when a theft ring targets the mall, threatening to frame innocent employees, Jason and Marco are forced out of their corners and into a partnership that breaks every protocol in the handbook.
Jason is terrified of letting anyone in. Marco is tired of being someone’s dirty secret. But in the neon glow of the arcade after hours, they’ll have to decide if breaking the rules is worth the risk of breaking their hearts.
You’ll love this if you enjoy:
✓ Grumpy security guard × sunshine arcade worker
✓ “I see you watching me on the cameras” tension
✓ Touch-starved hero who melts for the right person
✓ 2003 mall nostalgia (flip phones, neon arcades)
✓ Found family among coworkers
✓ Suspense subplot with actual stakes
✓ High heat with emotional depth
After Hours is a high-heat, grumpy/sunshine M/M romance featuring a stoic security guard, a relentless arcade worker, and a love found in the unlikeliest of places. Book 1 in The Closing Time Series.
Chapter One Preview
The security hub was quiet at 9 PM.
Jason Chen liked it that way. Forty-two monitors cast their blue-white glow across the cramped basement room, each one cycling through feeds from cameras scattered throughout the Ridgewood Galleria. Food court. Parking structure. The sad little fountain that management kept threatening to renovate but never did.
He’d been doing this for six years now. Six years of watching people shop and eat and wander and steal. Six years of learning the rhythms of the mall—the morning rush of power-walkers, the afternoon flood of teenagers, the evening slowdown when only the movie theater kept things breathing.
Six years of being invisible. Just the way he wanted it…
🎁 Exclusive Bonus Content
Want more Jason and Marco? Get “After Closing”—an exclusive extended scene that’s too hot for retailers. 🔥
More from The Closing Time Series
M/M romance set in the Ridgewood Galleria. Each book can be read as a standalone.
Night Shift — Coming Soon
Ryan Brooks × Evan Cole
Closeted Jock × Out Outcast • Gay Awakening
Frequently Asked Questions
Is After Hours spicy?
Yes! Heat level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (Very Hot). The tension builds through stolen glances and charged encounters before leading to steamy scenes that are fully on-page.
Do I need to read the series in order?
Each book features a complete romance with its own couple and guaranteed HEA. However, characters from earlier books appear in later installments, so reading in order provides the richest experience.
What’s the setting?
The series is set in 2003-2004, in a fictional suburban Ohio shopping mall. The pre-smartphone era creates a world where physical spaces matter, where people can’t just text their way out of situations, and where queer people found each other in liminal spaces like malls after hours.
Never Miss a Release
Get new release alerts, exclusive bonus content, and reader-only giveaways.